


day forty eight. in the evening.

by 2ndtolastrow



Series: Congratulations, it’s an old man! [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, also featuring punk rock cass, hey im back with more flashpoint!thomas tries to deal with canon, today: when your fam has experience with previously lethal fighters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 22:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20443628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndtolastrow/pseuds/2ndtolastrow
Summary: Apparently, it’s something of a family tradition to learn how to turn your strikes from lethal to non-lethal.





	day forty eight. in the evening.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for mild violence but I think that’s about it

Cassandra comes in from Hong Kong with a storm. She’s shorter than Thomas had expected. He’d made an effort to guess that first night, but something about her presence over video call had altered it, he supposes. Her short hair has been spiked up with hair gel, and there’s dark eyeliner streaked about her eyes.

It’s rather odd, given most of the times he’s seen her she looks like a messy-haired raccoon because she’s just woken up, rather than making it happen on purpose.

She pulls him into a hug in the terminal, almost tweaking his back. “Grandpa!”

“Cassandra.” He smiles down at her, taking in all the differences between her digital face and the real-life counterpart. There are a few things a computer can’t quite render. 

“C’mon, lets go get my bag.” She grabs his hand and tows him through the crowd without reservation, paying absolutely no attention to the various photographers. Her hand is calloused and strong. _Very_ strong.

“You flew commercial?” he asks, honestly confused.

She stops and points up at the sign. “Baggage claim is where we need to be, right?”

“Straight ahead.” Thomas is finding his rhythm. All he had to do was accept he was out of his depth and it got easier. It’s a familiar process.

He attempts to hold the umbrella over the both of them as they head outside and she laughs.

“A little rain doesn’t hurt.” A smirk spreads across her face as she turns him around, grabbing somewhere around his biceps. “Trust me, I should know.”

He still holds the umbrella over her head. “Let me try to be a gentleman, at least.”

She laughs, in that same shifting pitch as her speech comes, as though bothering to regulate it is too much effort to bother with. He isn’t sure why she’s so… 

It’s been a long time since someone’s made it clear he was going right instead of left by grabbing him, or laughed like he’s just another person. But he’s getting the feeling there’s a lot he doesn’t know about Cassandra.

He keeps the umbrella over her head, and the two of them walk towards were Alfred is waiting.

She hums, tilts her head, and looks him over. “Spar with us?”

He has the sudden awareness that it isn’t really a question. “If you like.”

The smirk is turned on him again, just a hint sharper. “I do.”

Thomas tugs at his workout shirt one last time, trying to get it to sit right on his shoulders. The lighting of the Cave casts every shadow in sharp relief, making his son and granddaughter look almost as though they’re in black and white.

The two of them stand in opposite corners of the mat, watching each other warily. It isn’t unfriendly, or unloving. They simply know that this is an opponent worth watching. 

Hm. Not _worth_. It isn’t about value, the way they watch each other. He frowns, searching for the appropriate word. Their full attention is _necessary_. 

Not perfect, but better.

Bruce’s hair flops slightly, as he rolls back his shoulders and bounces on the balls of his feet for just a moment. He doesn't do that often or overmuch, Thomas has found. Bruce is a settled person, who waits still and slow for someone else to act before he makes his move.

Bruce wasn’t settled before, though he was willing to wait and watch when it suited his purposes. One time, he’d spent an entire gala making certain that one of their guests wasn’t making off with the silver. 

The way Thomas has seen him fight extends that across to his movements, efficient and careful, none of the excess energy and movement that Dick has.

(Dick makes himself a moving target and a living distraction, turning every act into a performance that makes it clear his first teacher definitely wasn’t Bruce. Tim makes an effort to be efficient and precise, but he has a fluidity that he picked up elsewhere. Stephanie improvises and pulls her environment into the fight, putting herself into every blow. And the ‘gooperangs’ she uses couldn’t have come from Bruce’s mind.)

Cassandra grins, and lunges straight from a standing position.

She’s good, poetry in motion and all that. Watching her and Bruce fight is almost beautiful.

No. No _almost_ about it. It is beautiful. The two of them don’t look the same, but they do look and move _alike_. It seems almost like they know what the other person is going to do before it happens. It reminds him of dancing, the way the right partner can know how to read you so well that it isn’t so much leading and following as a single, unified motion.

The effect is a certain sort of mesmerizing.

Cassandra’s smaller form makes it surprising that she’s all offense, turning Bruce’s strikes back on himself and slamming her appendages into pressure points. Except… it’s _gentle_, he realizes.

After it clicks, he turns over the idea slowly. Thomas was first trained as a boxer, back when the only reason he would need to fight was exercise, and that’s the foundation of his whole fighting style. Boxing is not made to be gentle, and neither is this. But, perhaps…

The bats screech in time with their rhythm, and he realizes that they’re timing it so he can jump in easily. 

He watches Cassandra send her fist at Bruce’s throat in what ought to be a lethal strike, then barely divert it all on her own. He returns with what would be a crippling roundhouse if it were only a hint higher. She pins his arm. He breaks the hold with a twist.

They’re doing it on purpose.

If Bruce is settled, Thomas is stone. 

He joins in anyway.

There’s an understanding here, that he can hit as hard as he wants to, or needs to, or simply does when he isn’t holding back. That he doesn’t have to think about it.

Which is good, because Bruce’s fist is flying at his face.

Thomas drops into a roll.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!! Comments/kudos are always welcome


End file.
